The Giving Part of Taking Other People’s Pictures

June 14, 2021 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

It’s harder than ever to maintain, and then safeguard, our zones of privacy.

I’ve been thinking about it in terms of pictures that other people take of us or that we take of them—sometimes when those other people are friends, sometimes when they’re strangers, and sometimes when its companies or authorities who are taking them for their own purposes.

In these photographs, what is the line between a fair exchange (with mutual benefits) and an unwelcomed intrusion?

What exactly are we “taking” when we take a picture of somebody?

(When shown their photographs, tribal people often complain that the camera has somehow stolen their souls.)

Is there, or should there be, a “give” as well as a “take” with photography?

Two encounters this week sharpened that last question for me.

A close colleague of mine in counseling work stopped by unannounced with some cookies to end our just concluded school year on a celebratory note. We’d been meeting with our kids on Zoom and hadn’t seen one another in person for months. She was so glad to see me that she wanted to take my picture before leaving, but I waved her gesture off. I’d stopped mowing the lawn when I saw her heading my way and felt that my sweaty appearance would have made a poor souvenir (even though she clearly felt otherwise). “What just happened?” I wondered afterwards.

My second encounter came by way of reminiscence.

Three years ago this week, I had been in New Orleans and was remembering that unbelievably rich and flavorful time, eager to go back and dig in even deeper. Part of my return trip would be taking in a “second line” street parade, because every week of the year at least one of them takes place somewhere in the City.

*_{A “second line” street parade photo by Aeisha Palmer, May 20, 2007}*

As you can imagine, these parades (which are sponsored by New Orlean’s “social aid and pleasure clubs”) are a kind of paradise for professional and amateur photographers. While following a random NOLA thread last week, I came across a story about “the etiquette of making photos” of the performers at these parades. This story also speculated about the “taking and giving” boundaries of photographing other people. For example:

Are there different rules for friends than there are for strangers?

Several years ago, Susan Sontag explored these boundaries and expectations in a series of essays for the New York Review of Books, later published in her own book, On Photography. Sontag focused on the “acquisitive” nature of cameras, how they “take something” from whoever or whatever is being photographed, a sentiment that’s similar to those tribal member fears about having their essences stolen. She wrote:

To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed.

Sontag also commented on the vicarious nature of picture taking.

Photography has become one of the principal devices for experiencing something, [or at least] for giving the appearance of participation.

The way she saw it, we may not be marching in (or even watching) the parade, “but somehow we feel that we are” if we can capture a picture of it for savoring now and later on. Instead of “being in the moment,” we’re counting on the triggering nature of these pictures to approximate the real experience we’ve missed by “capturing enough of it” to still feel satisfied.

Of course, there are consequences on both sides to this kind of “taking.” A drive to accumulate photographic experiences can not only rob us of more direct engagement with other people and places (say, the actual smells and sounds of the parade, or the conversations we might otherwise be having with spectators and participants), it also raises questions about the boundaries that can be crossed when we’re driven by a kind of hunger to “take” more and more of them without ever realizing the impacts that we’re having by doing so. To our camera’s subjects, it can feel like violation.

As I’ve become more thoughtful about these impacts, it’s meant thinking through my picture-taking drive in advance.

What is gained and what can be lost when I’m taking somebody’s picture? What is (or should be) the etiquette around photographing others? These are questions that seem impossible to ignore since cameras are literally everywhere today, devouring what they see through their lenses. As a result, going through some Q&A with myself by way of preparation—whether I’m likely to be the photographer or the photographed—increasingly seems like a good idea.

For instance, what if strangers “who would make me a great picture” are performing in public or, even more commonly, just being themselves in a public place when I happen upon them with my camera?

My most indelible experience of the latter happened at the Damascus Gate, which leads to the “Arab Quarter” in Jerusalem’s Old City. In arcs along the honey-colored steps that sweep down to that massive archway, Palestinian women, many in traditional clothes, were gathering and talking in a highly animated fashion against the backdrop of ancient battlements, but as soon as I pointed my camera in their direction to take “my perfect shot,” they raised their hands, almost as one, and shielded their faces from me. Was that ever sobering! I didn’t know whether they were protecting their souls or simply their modesty and privacy from another invasive tourist.

In the story about picture taking at parades in New Orleans, one photographer who is drawn by their similarly incredible visuals observed:

You really have to be present and aware and know when the right time is to take a photo. Photography can be an extractive thing, exploitative, especially now when so many people have cameras.

To her, knowing when to shoot and when to refrain from picture taking is about reading the situation,

a vibe. You know when somebody wants you to take their photo, and you know when somebody doesn’t.

Another regular parade photographer elaborated on her comments:

If you carry yourself the right way . . . people putting on that parade see you know how to handle yourself and will give you a beautiful shot.

I’ve also found that performers want you to portray them in the best light and will help you “to light the scene” when you make eye contact and invite them to do so. On the other hand, they will also tell you (if you’re paying attention) when the lighting is off and you should just back off.

*_{Here’s one where I got it right, at least about “working the scene together.”}*

Because everybody wants to look their best while being photographed, the same rules usually apply when the subjects aren’t part of a performance but simply out in public, being interesting by being themselves. For the would-be photographer, it’s about initiating a conversation and establishing at least a brief connection before asking: can I take your picture? If they don’t feel “looked down upon” by your interest, they’ll often agree. But as with those “on stage,” these preliminaries can also result in: “No, I’d rather that you didn’t right now,” a phrase that’s hard to hear when “a great picture” is right there in front of you if only you could “take it.”

Whenever you know in advance that taking pictures could be uncomfortable for those being photographed, one New Orleans parade regular talked about the need to deepen his relationship with those he wants to photograph before showing up with his camera. Because he takes pictures at NOLA’s legendary funeral parades, he brings club members photos that he’s taken of the deceased on prior occasions so that colleagues and family “have a record of that person’s street style.” It’s his sign of respect at what is, after all, a time for grieving a loss as well as celebrating a life.

We go and we shoot funerals and [then] it’s not a voyeuristic thing. You’re doing what you do within the context of the community

—a community that you’ve already made yourself at least “an honorary member of” through your empathy and generosity.

Then, what you’re giving tends to balance what you’ll be taking.

_{I didn’t give them glasses of lemonade or anything, but I did ask these two (whom I didn’t know) whether I could take their picture when they walked past my house and both agreed. I had to hope that they were old enough to consent to be photographed.}

So what about my cookie-bearing friend who showed up unannounced this week?

Should I have relaxed “my best foot forward” enough to permit one sweaty shot when she so clearly wanted a memento of our reunion after so many months apart?

Yes, probably.

But I’ve become so defensive about cameras taking my picture on every city street, whenever I ring somebody’s doorbell or face my laptop screen that sometimes it’s hard to recognize when “putting down my guard” is actually relationship building and for my own good instead of some kind of robbery.

Where zones of personal privacy are concerned, this is a tricky time to navigate either taking pictures of somebody or being captured by one.

It’s one more reason to try and rehearse my camera-related transactions before I find myself, once again, in the middle of one.

+ + +

(If you’re interested in a photo essay I posted after my last visit to New Orleans, here it is, from May, 2018. Another post, with photos taken at the Mummers Parade in January, 2019, can be found here. Taking pictures has always been a way that I recharge for work, although I’m still in the process of learning its complicated rules.)

This post was adapted from my May 30, 2021 newsletter. Newsletters are delivered to subscribers’ in-boxes every Sunday morning and occasionally I post the content from one of them here. You can subscribe by leaving your email address in the column to the right.

The Glimpse of a Better World on a Snow Day

February 16, 2014 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

Snow. Snow. More snow.

Disasters can bring out the best in people, but our wintry circumstances here in The City That Loves You Back have not gotten that bad yet.

We’ve not had that much snow in Philadelphia.

But while “record-breaking” exaggerates our hardship, there have certainly been kindnesses and conversations that would not have occurred without our almost daily 3, 6 or 12 inches. Unfortunately, glimmers of community are less apparent than the impatience and irritability that have begun to feel like a tantrum.

It’s probably been more encouraging in pockets where snowy conditions produced clearer disasters. For example, where a cohort of drivers, thrown together by chance and icy roads, responds to their shared misfortune by helping one another, sharing their water, groceries and first aid kits, and finding a laugh in what they could not change.

Did the drivers in all those cars and trucks below just sit tight and assume the authorities would come and straighten everything out? How long do you think it took them to turn to one another for a helping hand and camaraderie during the slow sorting out?

crash 634x423 — 100 Vehicle Pile-up on PA Turnpike near Philadelphia on February 14

In A Paradise Built in Hell: the Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, Rebecca Solnit looked into natural and man-made catastrophes like the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina and found remarkable evidence of community re-building by victims from every station in life. Her argument is that “in the suspension of the usual order and the failure of most systems, we are free to live and act another way.” People rise to the occasion and become more generous, more enterprising and (paradoxically) more light-hearted than they were before.

For example, Solnit recounts dozens of individual stories after the 9/11 attacks, including that of Tobin James Mueller, who starts a single table donut dispensary for aid workers that expands dramatically into a way station for hundreds of firemen and ambulance workers on Pier 59 over the ensuing days.

Everyone here was rejected by the city’s official [emergency relief] sites. I accept anyone who wants to help and anything anyone wants to donate. We find a place for everything and everyone. A hopeful would-be volunteer comes up to me and asks if there is anything she can do. I give her a task, and that’s the last direction I need to give. Each volunteer becomes a self-motivated powerhouse who does whatever it takes to get the job done. Then they find a hundred more jobs to do. There is so much to do. It’s so much fun to participate in. I forget to sleep. Many of my volunteers have been working for over 36 hours. It is difficult to bring oneself to go back home. The thought of closing my eyes makes me tremble.

The people Solnit celebrates in A Paradise Build in Hell are not “nasty and brutish and short” and in need of managing by official society. Overwhelmingly, they are people who know perfectly well how to act when the social order has ground to a halt and they are free to rely on their resourcefulness and shared humanity.

Time and again, in post-disaster zones, she finds that it is representatives of the broken social order (such as the police and the military) who resort to violence because of their erroneous assumption that victims will quickly devolve into savages once society’s “safeguards” are removed. Solnit’s message throughout is that nothing could be farther from the truth. In philosopher William James’ observation during the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake: “energies slumbering” are awakened, and suffering and loss are transformed when they become shared experiences.

On this snow day, the questions are really quite simple.

-Why can’t problem solving in our everyday communities be more satisfying, resourceful, engaged and light-hearted, so that “disasters can just be disasters” and not the random opportunities for liberation that they are today?

-Why don’t our fleeting experiences of a better world after disaster give us the confidence to come together and build a more humane society?

-Why didn’t the solidarity so many of us experienced after 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, the terrorism at the Boston Marathon or the massacre of first graders in Newtown have a more permanent half-life?

-Why do we revert so readily to fear instead of to trust?

It is the middle of February. There hasn’t been enough snow in Philadelphia yet.

But we still have a few weeks left.

Thinking With Your Hands

November 10, 2013 By David Griesing 3 Comments

Drawing reduces what you’re seeing to its essentials.

It can be what you’re looking at, or what your mind’s eye is trying to visualize. Putting what you’re seeing down on the page may be like photography (aiming at accuracy) or like poetry (capturing the feeling of the moment).

Drawing has a different objective when you’re trying to “think though” a problem. Then it can be a tool for arriving at place that’s totally new.

Drawing is essentially shorthand. It has been described as low vs. high definition. Drawing generalizes and leaves the specifics until later, that is, until you’ve gotten the basics right—which is usually the hard part of creative thinking.

To draw is often a solitary act, between your thoughts, your eyes, and your hands, holding the paper while you’re making marks on it. Drawing yields its best rewards when it’s like this, a low instead of high tech endeavor. A screen or tablet introduces complexity, requiring the manipulation of software, a mouse or stylus. Hand drawing is at its simplest & more direct when it’s just you, a pencil and a piece of paper.

(Of course, this kind of drawing also gives you the singular satisfaction of crumpling up your mistakes, and hurling them away before starting over again. Nothing you can do on a screen lets you start over with that kind of flourish!)

The directness & simplicity of sketching out your ideas has additional power as a vehicle for collaboration. Its shorthand often suggests different ways of completing what you’ve jotted down. Your specifics don’t get in the way, inviting other people into your thought process to modify the essentials.

Drawing your ideas on a whiteboard (instead of a piece of paper) may be the optimal way to invite others into the creative process. In fact, as a tool for innovation the whiteboard is hard to beat. One technology reporter, Farhad Manjoo, has noted their ubiquity in our so-called “cradle of innovation,” Silicon Valley.

Whiteboards reward bigness: Because you’ve got to draw objects large enough for everyone to see, and because dry-erase markers are too fat to allow you to write too much text, the whiteboard encourages thinking about the highest levels of an idea, and it discourages getting lost in details.

In a recent video interview, Manjoo elaborates on the role that the whiteboard plays, even at companies whose business is preserving your handwritten notes and drawings on-line, such as Evernote.

Some of our earliest tool-based memories are often of drawing with crayons in a coloring book or with a piece of chalk on a blackboard. These competencies, repeated over & over again as children, created neural pathways (see Daniel Coyle in The Talent Code) as we first learned how to visualize our thoughts. When you pick up a pencil or marker and start to draw out your thoughts, you are tapping into a basic aptitude that is, in a sense, “hardwired” into almost all of us.

I was reminded of the power that drawing can unleash in all creative activities while reading a recent post by Laura Busche. Wanting to know why the act of sketching her ideas has such a powerful impact on her design work, Busche reviewed the work of neuroscientists, psychologists and others who have explored the possible connections. A couple of these findings bear repeating for those of us—everyone really—who struggles to “open up” their thinking and unlock their imaginations every day.

It may seem obvious, but incorporating drawing early on in your problem solving will have the greatest impact. When you’re inviting others to think through the problem you’ve drawn, creative beginnings may be enhanced even further when key limitations (like a product’s dimensions, or a service’s current cost) are specified. Then, like a thought balloon, the visualizations you’re sketching out are tethered to earth by one or two basic presumptions.

Another key take-away is that drawing your way to new possibilities improves with practice. Busche is particularly eloquent on this point.

What happens when you continually draw and connect symbols as you sketch? What happens when your brain tries to recall shapes that are appropriate to the idea you are trying to externalize? It isn’t hard to see that the better you become at translating imagery from your mind to paper, the more visual resources you will have to draw on and the easier it will be to retrieve them in the future. . . Hand-sketching forces you to access and cultivate a unique visual library in your mind.

Modern life is increasingly automated. Aside from dexterity on a keyboard or touchpad, our cultivation of manual skills (beyond eating, cleaning, driving and maybe playing a sport) is limited. We look at things or listen to them, often passively, instead of changing them or making them.

Our hands can help us to transform old thoughts into new ones. We know how to use them. They’re right in front of you, waiting to be used.

It may be time to start drawing again.